Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Baby Shower

Our wonderful friends recently threw us a great baby shower. It was cool to have foods at the shower from multiple different Asian cultures like Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Filipino. One of our friends even got a recipe from the Kimchi Mamas on how to make a Korean dish. The best part of the shower was to see the ethnic diversity of our friends and how they all had a good time together. I think the only scary part of the shower was them posting up a picture of our soon to be baby which was a morphed picture of my wife and I. I sure hope our baby turns out a lot better looking than that picture.

The baby is due in just a few weeks, and I am starting to have some palpitations and diarrhea. I don't know if some of the dad's went through this before their first child was born, but I have moments of excitement and moments of sheer panic. I can't believe I am going to be a parent of this child. The baby shower was pretty much the icing on the cake that this baby is real and that my wife and I are going to have a son. Sometimes it all seems so surreal. Any tips of how to deal with those moments of fear that happen before the baby is born besides running to the bathroom... Oh the woes of irritable bowel...

11 comments:

LOL Dr. I don't remember being nervous until just after the first baby was born. I was holding him and all of a sudden I was thinking, "What have I done?!" As if on cue, my son opened one eye, looked at me and started BAWLING!

As if to make it worse for me, the baby had been breech so my wife had to undergo an emergency C-Section. To let her recover, for the next two weeks, I did every diaper change, bath, all the housework, etc.

The good news is that you get the hang of it fast.

As for the picture, I would say none of my kids faces resembled either of us strongly. You never know how the genes will mix. In our case, my wife are I are pretty happy with the outcome so far.

We went to the hospital 4 times total in the 3 days before our daughter was born. The first time my husband was very nauseaous and had upset stomach. And each successive time, his symptoms lessened and by time I was in full active labor, he was able to get through it all without passing out or getting sick.

in the last week before delivery, it was starting to feel like we were going to be perpetually pregnant; like pregnancy was going to be part of our identity. We were getting impatient.

Her due date was the 14th, but my wife wanted to give birth on the 7th for some silly oriental numerological reason. so on the evening of the 6th, I said, "Ella, please come out tomorrow. It would make your mommy very happy." Lo and behold, she was given the same gift of obedience as Ella of Frell!

the delivery process had the feel of a weekend gardening project. very matter-of-fact, clinical, by the books. But once I cut that umbilical cord, it was like, um, what's this thing crying over here, and what are we supposed to do with this?

That feeling immediately washed away as I held her in my arms, and we made eye contact for the very first time, father and daughter. She was only minutes old, but it was as if we'd known each other for a million years.